Parenthood
by spearmintsparrows
Summary: One of the Salvatores makes a mistake. She isn't exactly a bundle of joy.
1. Painful Haven

**A/N: Sooo, this is an idea that came to me a couple of days ago, and I really want to explore it and see where it goes. I rated this 'm' for safety regarding the violence described, but I won't be writing anything dreadfully gory or touchy-feely. That is not my style. I value your opinions and constructive criticism, so I would greatly appreciate it if you gave me some feedback to help me better my writing. My review narwhal has quite the rumbly tummy, that only reviews can satisfy C; I do not own anything but my characters and these words. **

I trudged along the road desolate of cars and people. I hadn't really expected them anyway. Apart from it being one of the farthest back of back roads, it was one of the rainiest days in Virginia. Seemed just my luck for Mother Nature to cry her eyes out during the adventure of my little soul search. To cap it all off, I didn't even know how to hitchhike properly. I kept using the wrong couple of fingers the first few times, and after that I had to find effective ways to turn down rides offered by some fairly suspicious figures. I'd nearly had to walk myself all the way down here from Norfolk, after I ran out of petty change for the buses.

Overhead, the clouds released another torrent of utterly consuming wetness, staining my hair and clothes. What wasn't drenched beyond sense was trembling. But I wouldn't allow myself to turn right around to find the roadside inn I'd passed miles back. I'd set out to find something in myself and prove a point to my family. Surely the premise of my mission wasn't exactly logical, considering I'd just twirled a finger over a map of Virginia with my eyes shut and headed out. On the other hand, 'Mystic Falls' didn't sound like too bad a place to get in touch with your spiritual side.

Up ahead, I could see blurry lines of green and beige forming a stretch of forest and dusk on one side of the road, and a railing on the other. And, up ahead, I spotted an odd twist of shadows. A figure? Who else would be crazy enough to travel alone on foot in weather like this? After that first thought, something else a little more vital came to mind. Who would be crazy enough to travel alone on foot in weather like this, with the distinct possibility of crazier, more murder-oriented figures out to prey on the young and stupid? _Me. _My chest tightened a bit at that, and my eyes shifted back and forth under a sheet of droplets, searching for any route that could give me a wide berth of the shadow man. No such luck. Determined, I carried on. I wasn't completely stupid; I had a knife in my pocket just in case some insane creep tried to kidnap me on the highway. My mother could almost be proud. Soon, though, I realized maybe that guy needed a knife more than I did. A surgical one. As soon as we got within a couple yards of each other, I noticed a few prominent things about him. He was limping, he was bloody, his clothes were torn, and he had the most beautiful, painful, _angry _face I'd seen all at once.

"Hey!" I had to shout for my voice to carry any sort of distance under the heavy fire of the rain. "Hey, are you okay?"

The man-young as me, or not much older, I saw, once he got close enough-didn't reply. He just limped forward in my general direction. I ran to meet him, burying the corpse of my concerns because he was obviously in no shape to maim or kidnap me. I had to search for footing in the slick grass, tripping up a couple of times on the clawing mud.

"Hey. Are you hurt very badly? You're a mess. Lord…here, I've got some medical supplies in my bag….Shit, Band-Aids aren't going to do much, huh? I think I've got…I've got some cleaning stuff, and some shirts I could tear." I laid my hand on his shoulder, steadying him against me as his weight gave way. I eased us to the ground, trying not to bend under him and hit any of his wounds. "What happened?"

"Are you alone?" His brows furrowed during the first time he'd spoken. His voice was low, deep like a century. It sounded…conflicted. "You shouldn't be alone out here."

"And you shouldn't have been doing whatever it was that got you like this. Trade stories?"

He didn't reply, so I took that as a 'yes'.

"I'm out here on a mission. I'm gonna call it a secret one, or else it'll lose its cool. You?"

"…" He said something then, but I lost it in the wind and water. I leaned closer, tilting my ear so I could hear.

"What?"

"I'm sorry. You're such a nice girl. But I've had a really tough day, and I'm just so _hungry."_

"What do you mean?" I asked, leaning back.

"Don't be afraid." I met his eyes, and my blood ran thin. His own eyes had bled darkness all the way through, veins shot black beneath his skin. _It must be a trick of the rain, it's got to be a trick of the shadows…_I scrambled backwards over the ground, skin stretched tight in disbelief. He followed, too quick, his body pressing mine into the earth and his hands stealing my wrist. With the loose one, I tried to reach back for my knife. The man got there first, sending it skidding into the green.

"Stop!" I shouted, twisting and thrashing against his hold.

"Shhh, shhh. It won't last long. It'll be done, and you'll be asleep." Out of nowhere, his face was at my throat, sharpness tearing away my breath. I screamed as pain ached its way into my body, dripping down into the green as the knife had. Then, as pain began to fade into something else, something weak and numb, I fought in the way only someone fighting to live could fight. I bit back. Slashed my teeth across his face, them being the only weapon available. He growled, snapping my head back with the back of his hand. Moonlight pounding through my skull, I fell. Fell somewhere farther down than the ground. I fell into resignation. Purposelessly, I lay, catching water and iron into my mouth. My screams had long since been silenced by the rain. _I never should've left…Mom, you were right…you were always right…_

When he was done, the man looked between his tattered self and me with dead eyes…and then he shook himself alive. "I'm sorry…so sorry…" He whispered, shocked. I closed my eyes. I didn't want to see him anymore. Maybe he stayed. Maybe he left. Maybe…maybe I just didn't care. I dreamed the sounds of my shallow breaths, sheets of cold my only blanket. I dreamed of faces I knew, and thought-

Death must only kill when he's lonely.


	2. Playing Ghost

The next time my eyes opened, I was choking on dirt. It pressed against my face on all sides, all the surface of my skin. It was suppressing me, breaking me, _burying _me. My hands pulled through the soil on autopilot, scratching at it in a panic. I worked at it awhile like that, body doing what needed to be done while my mind remained in the black. Was this what death was? Sitting in a grave, feeling the earth move around you for the lengths of eternity? I choked on that thought along with the dirt. I'd never thought to be afraid of being buried. I figured when it came my turn, I wouldn't be able to witness it. I'd been so wrong lately…

My fingers broke the surface not soon enough, tasting the oxygen my lungs were acutely feeling withdrawal for. I dragged myself from the ground, heaving myself back into a different kind of darkness. Around me night bled through trees, crowned by shades of starlight. It took me a few seconds to handle standing, and by then I could think again. That in itself wasn't especially welcome. A new breed of panic gripped at me. This was not death. Death did not have hands and lungs and starlight. I used those hands, running them along my face, stomach, legs. I had a body. A scratched, smudged, bloody body. And a backpack. I had a backpack. I looked over the edge of the hole I'd been in and reached for the bag. I didn't think death had trail mix or a driver's license.

If I wasn't dead, what was I? I fell against the nearest tree, trying to make sense of what my memories told me. That man. He'd done something to me. _I'd tried to help him, then he attacked me…_I remembered veins and teeth, his fist and the taste of iron. The look of horror on his face like he couldn't believe what he'd just done. And then he buried me alive. _Because _that's _how you show remorse…the psychotic ass. _I was angry and confused, and my stomach felt like it had some serious internal bleeding going on. I thought about how long I'd been underground, and realized it must have been hours, looking at the moon. The leaves around me were still wet with the rain. But how had I lasted? I'd seen a crime show, once, where two boys were buried alive, and they survived because they used less breath when they went to sleep. Maybe that had happened while I was unconscious. I felt for my throat and found a mess of congealed blood and sweat. Gross. I stood up too quick and had to lean back against the trunk, reaching into my bag. I pulled out a little compact mirror and squinted in the moonlight. The sight was…Lord, it was…

I threw up. Twice. Then I finally confronted the reality of what had happened. I'd been almost-murdered. Almost-murdered by an injured psychopath on a rainy highway. If that wasn't a cosmic signal that I was unforgivably stupid for leaving home to do this whole soul-searching thing…Lord. I needed…I needed to go somewhere. Talk to someone. The police? A hospital? I'd never been in a situation like this. Thank God, because I'd have to be seriously screwed up to be used to being buried alive by homicidal maniacs. And if that wasn't simply enough, I felt like though I'd narrowly escaped highway murder, my body was traitorously trying to finish the job. My insides felt like they'd been tied together and strung along a clothesline inside my body, aching and burning with pain and…hunger. I was so hungry. Because everyone needs a Snickers after something as traumatic as this…

Given that I was completely emotionally compromised, I tried to view everything very scientifically. I was a victim, and I was hungry. I was also a mess of my own blood and gravesoil. Therefore, I needed to go into town and get help. Therefore, I needed to get cleaned up. I took a shirt from my bag and doused it with water from my old metal canteen. I closed my eyes as I set to work, not wanting to even _imagine _looking at what probably rested under all the dried gore. Oddly, I felt like a survivor from a zombie movie, the one girl who somehow pulls it together at the end. Or maybe not, considering I'd just dug myself out of my own grave, a still from the oldest-fashioned zombie flick ever created. So less survivor, more like…._Night of the Living Dead. _An eerie sensation pet my spine.

I focused on the work after that. Scrubbed off the dirt from my face, throat, and hands. Did my best to get it out from under my nails. I combed my hair and changed my clothes, which were blessedly left without taint in the bag. It was cold, so I doubled up with one of those lumberjack shirts. One I'd filched from Grayson before I'd left. I stole another glance up at the sky, wondering again how far into the woods I was. I did my fair share in the recesses of the wilderness, but tracking and compasses were lost on me. I looked to the dredges of my directional knowledge and picked a direction. Then I fell to the forest floor and cried.

I walked through the woods with a short-circuited heart, quickly losing any hope of keeping track of where I'd already been. I could only pray I kept in a straight path. The woods didn't make for a comfortable walk in the dark. I think they felt the need to be spooky and stereotypical. They were really lame woods. It might have taken hours. It might have been less. But in one time frame or another, I made it back to the same side of the road I'd fallen on. I walked on, coming to a standstill only when I reached that spot. _Out, spot._ I don't know what you're supposed to feel when you return to places like this, places where you died more on the inside than the out. I simply felt it with my fingertips once, then walked over it. I'd left my tears in the forest.

I made it to Mystic Falls around the time the first peekings of pre-dawn entered the sky. The town didn't really fit what I'd been picturing. It…well, it looked like a town. Maybe a town with a few shadows darker than the rest, but overall it screamed 'stereotype small town with skeletons in the closet that are really more like wishbones'. Honestly. I'd been expecting something a little more…'mystic'. But victims can't be choosers.

I decided to sleep the shock off at an inn before dotting the i's and crossing the t's on the matter of reporting what had happened. Maybe it was selfish, given that I was letting a deranged man prowl the streets an extra night. But I needed some time before I could even sort out any kind of information that would supply a sketch, anything that could link him to me or me to him. It was hard to see anything passed the delusion of that image stapled in my skull. All that was there were spider's legs of black and eyes cast of onyx. It wasn't an especially useful image, or an especially sane one. It was one best kept in a box under the floorboards in the back of my brain.

I checked in the local motel, booking only one night. I'd have to get a job soon, or else I'd be sleeping in a tree in the woods. After all I'd been through to make it to this town alive, there wasn't a way in the world I'd be leaving unless I was being chased by a mob or carried out in a box. The motel was in itself a little piece of security in all the madness. The carpets looked worn but in the good way. The bed looked even better. I dumped my bag on the bedside table and threw off my shoes. I'd played ghost all night under the ground. I deserved the sleep.


	3. 180 Degree Fallout

**A/N Long time no type! I've been off on one quest or another the last few months, but things are settling down. I'll try to write more regularly. Let's see where this takes us.**

I woke up with the feeling of heat rushing thick under my skin. Alarmed, I groggily rolled off the mattress onto the floor, thinking something along the lines of stop, drop, and roll. Once I hit the floor, I looked around wearily, looking for flames and listening for sirens. There was nothing. There were none. I dragged myself up, confused, and settled my face on the covers. The feeling was still there, burning along my nerves. I groaned. So apparently being buried alive constituted a complementary fever and headache. I dragged myself off the bed, staggering to the murky curtains across and coaxing them open. Immediately, I let them fall back, grasping at my eyes. The strength of sunlight diluted my weariness, but caused my headache to spike to a level that made me want to live back under those covers until this whole chapter of fail in my life ended. I pushed the curtains shut, falling back on the bed to take account of everything. Right. I had to find that man. Or find out who he was. I didn't really want to see him again. The thought of his face contorted by shadows gripped my heart in a cruel, iron vice. I felt like a faerie under an upturned water glass, deprived of any way out of this situation that would have me come out on top.

I checked out of the motel after asking the clerk a few questions about the town. I described my attacker as well as I could, saying he was a distant relative I was trying to find to make funeral plans. The clerk had no leads, but he sent me on my way to the local hangout, the Grill. Maybe I could catch a break there. I swallowed my misgivings about the whole town and took a brave step into the sunlight. The fire of my headache arose in such a stark wave I retreated into the shadows, hands crept to my face in bare pain. Great. Migraines triggered by light. This was so far from the exciting, rebellious trip I'd planned. I cursed a little under my breath as I dug into my backpack for more layers. I pulled on gloves, a scarf, sunglasses, and a hat for good measure. Shadows clung to my every curve, making me feel like a girl cast into the role of that one trench-coated Suspicious Figure lurking behind the protagonist every second of the film.

By the time I got to the Grill, I was almost savagely grateful for the dark, cold chatter of civility it offered. I hadn't fared well the whole journey down. Sickness clawed at my stomach and briefly I wondered if I was in shock. My would-be killer better not have gotten me ill on top of his macabre social call. I walked straight to the bar, aware how odd and gaunt I must look given the delightful day spinning itself through outside.

"Hey." I caught the attention of the boy washing glasses behind the counter. His name tag read Matt. He read like a good guy. Blue eyes, blonde hair. Sweet face. Hard to think a town with a kid like this could also bare a homicidal psychopath. "Can you help me find someone?"

"Who're you looking for?"

"That's the thing. I don't exactly know."

"Well that _is _a bit of a roadblock, huh?" I liked the guy. Once he saw there would be a little more effort required than clean-cut yesses and no's, his eyes didn't lose interest and he didn't seem particularly put out of his way.

"It is." I agreed. "All I got for you is dark eyes, swooshy hair. Not much older than you or me. He was wearing a heavy coat. And…." I paused, grasping at the thin veil of memories that were clear in the night. "…and he's got a tattoo! Yeah. A tattoo on his leh-, no that would be his right shoulder. Something floral."

"You had me hopeless there for a moment, but I think I might know the guy you're looking for." My attention snapped back to him, having drifted off in a sleepy haze of disappointment and hunger. My gaze fell up from his shoulders and to his face.

"Yeah?" My eyes widened behind the aviators in reckless hope. Then something riled up in me, painted black and shallow. Maybe, just maybe, I didn't really want to find this guy. My thoughts were caught between a gnawing inside of me and confliction while he told me the man's name.

I stumbled outside, suddenly aware I was in a lot worse shape than I'd led myself to believe. Very much unlike a moment ago, my vision was doing odd little contortions and my skin was dancing with this twisted sensation like something was about to touch me. My throat felt about as hollow as my stomach, whose complaints were definitely not aimed at a Snickers. I passed a number of people, unable to take my eyes off them, sure they were looking passed my aviators and deep down into my soul where neither of us could come back. I turned a corner, then a third, a seventh.

Metal screeched. I saw the wreck happen a second before it did, when the speeder came round in a precarious flurry. Shrapnel flew everywhere, broken bits of glass and steel scoring the road and sidewalk in a chandelier explosion of lethal confetti. I dove towards the closest storefront instinctively. My eyes were drawn to the cars. No one lived. I'm not entirely sure how I knew. But none lived. The two cars were so warped in a quelling embrace. I couldn't conceive survival out of the flames spouting from the hoods. There were no screams, not from the cars. There was only…

Blood. Too much blood. Pouring slowly and surely from one passenger seat, crawling sickly down one window. The debris held crimson, too. Tiny shards of glass fell at my feet, kissed with crimson. My mind rejected the sight. And yet the miniscule scarves of red caused something in me to stir. Something with blood red eyes and snow white fingers. I turned from it, shook myself clean. I approached the cars, choking on smoke and sirens. I craned my neck to see the wounded, to aid? What was there, Evangeline? _Death. _I felt the whisper of it in my veins, confirming my premonitions. I was caught in disbelief, shock, yes—that's why my fingertips pressed themselves forward, to test the metal.

"Out of the way!" A uniformed man pushed himself passed me, gesturing for a team of paramedics and an extraction crew to follow.

I gripped my chest, stumbling away from the tragic, eerie scene. Wished I could stumble away from myself. The name danced itself over and over in my mind.

I was ready to meet my murderer.


End file.
